Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/17

Rh definite sensory elements and material forms and movements in the lives of others. One possessed of a limited number of such habits, a dozen or more, can, by organizing them in various ways, give expression to an unlimited number of interests. At the same time that he expresses any one of these interests, he, automatically and subconsciously and by virtue of the effects of the habits involved in the expression of that interest, can support in others, as many as can listen and become interested in observing them, an experience of an unlimited number of words and sentences, of objects organized out of elementary sounds. just so, the spiritual reality which environs and supports our lives and our experience of nature automatically awakens in our lives a perception of objects all of which can be analysed into a small and definite number of elements, such as oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. Our experience of the compounds of the elements, such as water and carbon dioxide, would thus be due to the effect upon our experience of habits constantly combining because of the need they serve in the expression of its interests. These inorganic compounds would ‘be analogous to syllables and words used by man in expressing his interests by means of discourse. The chemical forces involved in the combining of these elements into their compounds, or in the disrupting of these compounds into their elements, are like the interhabital forces experienced by us when a new interest or plan of action is being formed through the integration of established habits, or when an old interest is being disintegrated into its constitutent [sic] habits. And the energy which supports in us the experience of the elements, of the objects these elements compose, and of the blind forces or causal relationships that maintain among them, is but the dynamic aspect or core of the varying interests of this environing spiritual life. Even the sun and its attendant planets would, according to this suggestion, come to be viewed as our experience of the energetic core or habits of the living interests of this spiritual reality, and the attractions and repulsions that exist among these larger bodies of matter would come to be viewed as the forces that hold or that sunder the various habits, the organized systems of habits, and the interests that constitute the life or nature of this spiritual reality. Finally, the rotatory motions that go on in these large masses of matter will come to be understood as due to the cyclical order in which the automatized interests that constitute the dynamic core of the life of this spiritual reality, an order realized by us all, at least subconsciously, among the routine of habits that determines the most economical and efficient daily efforts of us all. Special cases of this routine order in a system of habits often subconsciously operating are experienced in the singing of